Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 10:08:05 10/23/03
Go up one level in this thread
On October 23, 2003 at 07:04:17, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote:
>On October 23, 2003 at 05:55:12, Daniel Clausen wrote:
>
>>On October 23, 2003 at 05:31:26, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote:
>>
>>>In a programming course (several years ago) we had to write the final project
>>>for two different plattforms (in my case an old HP9000 and a PC under FreeBSD),
>>>and the source code had to be identical, no changes allowed. I agree that it is
>>>not really difficult, only some discipline is needed.
>>
>>It really depends on the program.
>>
>>The GUI-part is easily platform-dependent.
>
>Yes, of course. In our case, we were allowed to use #IFDEF statements to check
>the environmental variables, but the source files had to be identical (strictly
>speaking the source code was not identical for both compilers, but you get what
>the teacher meant). Disciplined students (like me) had a strict separation
>between platform-dependent and platform-independent code.
>
>>(like Arena, xboard, winboard etc)
>>There are toolkits around, which are available for multiple platforms, but most
>>aren't.
>>
>
>Correct. But even if you use these toolkits, it still makes sense to keep the
>platform-dependent code to a minimum.
>
>>The engine itself could easily be platform-independent, except for a small part.
>
>A chess engine is a good example for a program that can be written almost
>completely portable.
>
>>(like multi-threading etc) Of course, as soon as you write something in Asm it
>>looks different, but if it's just a tiny part, that's easy to port too.
>>
>>Sargon
>
>Portable code has some performance issues. It is probably not the best idea for
>performance critical tasks. In case somebody writes non-portable but faster code
>(or even assembler), I think it is a good idea to keep a portable (slower)
>version of the same functions. But I have self not written any code line in
>years, so do not take me too seriously (:
>José.
The source code of Chess Tiger is portable (using #if in some places) and can be
compiled for the following platforms
* DOS (several compilers)
* Windows
* PalmOS
* Linux (not completely finished, but close)
I don't use ASM and I don't want to use ASM, that's why achieving portability
has been possible.
I view portability and readability as more important than the few percent
performance I could get from writing some parts in ASM.
Christophe
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